Commercial aviation tends to be a very competitive industry vying for the consumer's dollar. To compete in the industry, airlines must strive to be efficient in all areas while offering passengers amenities that bring attention to the airlines and induce passengers to fly with a particular airlines. One area of interest to the passengers is the inflight experience, including the food and beverage service. Passengers want a variety of options for food and beverage, which is a challenge to the airlines who want to conserve weight and space. The conflict between passenger experience and airline economics is never more prominent than in in the aircraft's galley. An aircraft galley refers to the area of the vehicle that is used by the flight attendants to service the passengers, particularly the passengers' food and beverage needs. Due to constraints with space and weight, these areas are very ordered and efficient in all aspects of their construction and arrangement. One important consideration in the design of the galley is the power distribution and power consumption of the various equipment, or “inserts.” Inserts can be any power consumer such as a coffee brewer, an oven, a trash compactor, an overhead light, or any other electrical appliance that can be found in the galley area. Power on an aircraft is a limited and controlled commodity, and the control of the power is an important consideration in every galley.
The power arrangement of the aircraft galley is traditionally been a series of individual appliances connected to a main power supply, each appliance individually operated by its own controls, power switch, etc. Because power is limited on a flying aircraft, the management of this power is critical to the safe and reliable operation of the aircraft. However, with each individual appliance operating independently of the other appliances, control over the power structure is limited. Also, there is no easy way of discerning an overall health of the power system or run diagnostics of the system. Rather, each applicant must be polled individually to determine its health, operational condition, maintenance, etc. Because of the arrangement of some galleys, this can be labor intensive and expensive to conduct. What the art needs is a galley power system than can interface with all of the various equipment in the galley, run diagnostics and service inquiries, and control the galley through an interface that manages the power according to a heirarchy.
Another aspect of the efficiency of the galley is the communication between galleys, flight attendants, and passengers. The service and satisfaction of the passengers is of great concern to airlines, but there are challenges to attending to so many customers confined in such close quarters. Most communication is either vocal, or in some cases there is limited electronic communication between the passengers and the galley. However, the state of the art aircraft lacks a comprehensive communication system that links the passengers, galley, and flight attendants in an efficient manner.